Tuesday, May 07, 2013

The first half of April started with many of the expected early migrant songbirds, wading birds and terns arriving in predicted numbers and locations. Other than the appearance of one rare vagrant, the second half of the month became a waiting game of great concern to local birders. I added 41 year birds during the month of April. During April of 2012 I added 48.

Blue-winged Teal are usually difficult to see around Brooklyn, but beginning with a pair in Prospect Park in April 1st, individuals and small flocks were seen through the month in various locations.

Small numbers of wood-warblers began to trickle into Brooklyn and by the end of the month I had added 13 species to my Brooklyn year. The bad news is that nearly all had been in extremely low numbers. For example, I've seen only one American Redstart and one Common Yellowthroat. By this time in the Spring they should be fairly common. I did manage to see two uncommon warbler species - Yellow-throated Warbler and Kentucky Warbler, both of which are birds who nest South of NYC but occasionally overshoot their breeding grounds.

The lack of a songbird fallout was somewhat made up for by the arrival of a Say's Phoebe in Prospect Park on the 27th.

Tom Burke, the voice of the New York City Rare Bird Alert described the past few weeks meteorological events as "continued abysmal winds for migration". In my 20-plus years of birding I've never experienced such a late songbird migration. I'm hoping that, in fact, it has just been the winds holding up the birds and that they will arrive on the next South winds. So far it looks like Thursday night into Friday will be the next wind shift. If you don't mind rain, Friday could be good.